Li Gonglin: The Best Painter of the Song Dynasty
Today, we’re going to introduce a man known as “the best painter of the Song Dynasty”. Living in a period of cultural refinement, this 11th-century painter outshined his contemporaries with his seminal style in both figure and horse painting.
After our previous discussion on Su Shi, many listeners became rather enchanted by this beloved Song Dynasty proto-Renaissance man, not only for his genius in a multitude of different fields, but also because of his incorrigible optimism no matter the circumstances, even after a narrow escape from death. If you recall, it was in the year 1079 when certain rivals in the court took issue with a thank you letter he wrote to the emperor, accusing Su Shi of “great irreverence towards the emperor”, a capital offence that could have easily resulted in a death sentence.
Su Shi’s blind date with the executioner was narrowly avoided to a large extent because of his extensive network of friends as well as former colleagues who pleaded for him. One important figure among them was Wang Shen, son-in-law of Emperor Yingzong and a renowned painter in his own right. After this incident, Wang invited 16 friends, with Su Shi as the guest of honor, to gather in the Western Garden of his private estate in present-day Kaifeng of central China’s Henan Province.
The 16 invited guests were all heavyweights in the literary and art circles of the day. Among them, Su Shi and his younger brother, Su Zhe, were later hailed as part of the Eight Great Masters of the Tang and Song dynasties, a household term acknowledging their unparalleled literary status. In terms of calligraphy, Su Shi, together with Huang Tingjian and Mi Fu, are ranked among the top four calligraphers of the Song Dynasty. In terms of painting, Li Gonglin and Mi Fu were both leading figures in Chinese painting history. Li Gonglin, our protagonist for today, is considered by art historians as “the best painter of the Song Dynasty”.
Organized and attended by literary and artistic figures, such gatherings were called “elegant gatherings” and were quite popular in ancient China. At these gatherings, hosts and guests painted, chanted, feasted, and enjoyed a variety of entertainment as they shared their views on a wide range of topics in a relaxed atmosphere.
The gathering convened at Wang Shen’s Western Garden was said to have been recorded in a painting by Li Gonglin along with a namesake text by Mi Fu. But as Mi Fu’s written account didn’t make its first appearance until the Ming Dynasty and no other literature back in the Song Dynasty ever mentioned the gathering, for centuries, Li Gonglin’s painting entitled Elegant Gathering at the Western Garden came to be the only source that provided a glimpse into such a highbrow event.
Li Gonglin was born into a scholar-official family in the year 1049 in Shucheng of east China’s Anhui Province. He succeeded in the highest level of the imperial examination at the age of 21. But he surprisingly postponed beginning his official career until a decade later. During this period, he stayed at a famous mountain retreat in the Longmian Mountains near his hometown, and spent much of his time practicing painting. It was also during this period that he befriended Su Shi, and his accomplishments as a painter earned him a place among Su Shi’s elite circle.
Li Gonglin is credited with the invention of the style known as baimiao, a term used to describe line-drawn monochromatic painting, as opposed to painting in full color. His painting is characterized by his uniquely refined, controlled yet expressive mastery of linear brushwork.
Li Gonglin’s visual record of the gathering at Wang Shen’s Western Garden had been so mesmerizing for artists in the following dynasties that they have created altogether 47 versions of the painting. His original used to be collected in the Forbidden City. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Qing’s last emperor Pu Yi stole a huge number of cultural relics under the pretext of taking them out for repair. Among those treasures was Li Gonglin’s painting of the gathering. It was then lost during the ensuing political turmoil and is now preserved at the Taipei Palace Museum. One Qing Dynasty version by court painter Ding Guanpeng is currently in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing.
For the same reasons, existing paintings from Li Gonglin’s own hand are extremely rare, however, his technical and stylistic legacy has resonated with artists through the centuries, especially with regard to his portrayal of horses.
Horses played an important role in the military expansion of ancient Chinese empires and in the life of the imperial court. The earliest written record of the legendary Ferghana can be traced to the Han Dynasty, which existed from 202 BCE to 220 CE. Diplomat Zhang Qian brought the breed back from central Asia via the Silk Road, and Emperor Wu composed a poem describing it as “heavenly horse”.
In the Tang Dynasty, which lasted from 618 to 907, riding became a popular recreation among the nobles: even some court ladies played polo. Fairly quickly, horses became a popular subject for painting as a symbol of energy, ambition, and aspiration. Many of the favored court painters in the Tang Dynasty were horse painters, including the famous Han Gan and Wei Yan.
The Song Dynasty was a period of cultural refinement that also looked back to the artistic achievements of the Tang. Li Gonglin’s painting honors the tradition of horse painting made famous by his Tang predecessors. Legend has it that Li was so good at painting horses that one time a horse died after he completed his painting because the spirit of the horse had been captured by the painter.
One of his most famous masterpieces is called the Five Horses. In it, Li depicts five horses from the Western Region that were given as tributes to the Song emperor, along with their grooms with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. These five lifelike horses were hailed as a “divine work” by his contemporaries.
Similar to Elegant Gathering at the Western Garden, the Five Horses went missing in the 1930s, and was known only through black-and-white collotype reproductions. Then in 2019, the painting reappeared for the first time in more than 80 years in an exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum in Japan. What became immediately apparent was that the actual painting is surprisingly rich in colors and transcends the conventional image of Li Gonglin as a master of baimiao.
The other representative work of Li Gonglin’s horse painting is Pasturing Horses after Wei Yan, which portrays about 1,286 horses and 143 grooms on a scroll of more than four meters long. Tang Dynasty court painter Wei Yan created the original piece in the late 8th century to capture the grandeur of the royal horses in a variety of postures and activities – standing, walking, frolicking, galloping, drinking, bathing, rolling, fighting, etc.
About 300 years later, Song Emperor Shenzong liked the painting so much that he requested Li Gonglin make a copy, in order to better preserve the painting. As the most ambitious emperor of the Song Dynasty, what Shenzong wished to copy was perhaps more than a Tang painting, but the prosperity of the Tang empire. Li Gonglin’s copied version has largely preserved the layout of Wei Yan’s original, but his recreation can clearly be identified by his distinctive use of brush strokes.
Interestingly, the painting stands as perhaps the only case in Chinese art history where the value of a copied version is rated even higher than the original. In the following dynasties, it has been treasured by various emperors, including Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Zhu came from a poor background and paid little attention to arts. However, he showed a special fondness for this painting and left a postscript to describe how the painting had reminded him that he, in fact, was as an “entrepreneurial ruler” who must guard against risks and be prepared for emergencies.
Since 2002, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage released the Catalogue of Prohibited Outgoing Cultural Relics to safeguard the country’s national treasures. The Catalogue was issued in three batches, preventing the exhibition of 195 invaluable pieces beyond the nation’s borders. Pasturing Horses after Wei Yan was included in the second batch of 37 remarkable artworks and is currently collected at the Palace Museum in Beijing.
While Wei Yan’s original painting is said to have been destroyed during World War II, Li Gonglin’s copied version provided a precious testament to the consummation of horse painting in the history of Chinese art.
Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Song Yimin, translator Yang Guang, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.
